Music and Religion have always had a fragmented relationship regarding the boundaries of human expression.
In European and American culture emotions are disturbed when it comes to claims of blasphemy and cult like structure in music’s messages. Although these protest are almost never taken into an organised from like in Asia.
Malaysia and Indonesia have gained a reputation for putting tight restrictions on international artist who perform in their country. These pressures on both the government and international performer usually come from extremist religious groups.
Tour dates being a casualty of these pressures has gained the attention of international press. In 2009 Beyonce’ was forced to cancel her I Am….Tour performance in Malaysian when rules restricted her from wearing her staple black leotard and demanded she abide by the countries strict code of conduct which ruled out; jumping, shouting and hugging . A spokes woman from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party commented “We are against sexy Western performances; we don’t think out people need that”.
Lady GaGa recently met similar opposition when her scheduled show in Indonesia on Tuesday was cancelled after she was refused a permit from the Indonesian government. This decision followed protests by both Christian and Islamic Groups who threatened to causes chaos at the venue accusing GaGa of spreading a “Satanic Faith”.
If the concert had gone ahead GaGa would have been performing to a sold out venue. This begs the question of why these small extremist groups are still being allowed to influence these countries government’s decisions on disallowing concerts by international performers, when there is clearly an audience for these shows from the wider community.
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